Call It What You Want(69)

I take his hand, and I’m surprised to find it’s trembling. “Rob,” I say. “You aren’t like your father. You’re kind. You’re smart. You’re not him. You’re not a thief. Do you understand me? You’re not.”

“You’re wrong,” he says, and his voice almost breaks.

I don’t understand. “I’m what?”

“You’re wrong.” He pulls his hand out of mine. “I’m not a good person.”

“Rob, you are a good person.”

“No.” His voice has deepened. He turns and looks at me. “I’m not. Do you understand me? I’m not.”

A chill winds through my chest at the intensity of his words. “What do you mean?”

“I am a thief.”

“What?”

“I’m a thief. I stole money from the cash box of a fund-raiser last week. I used a cheerleader’s credit card to order shoes. And last night—” He breaks off and shoves himself off the bed, then opens a dresser drawer to swipe something out of it.

I’m frozen on the edge of his bed.

He grabs my wrist and pulls out my hand. “Here.”

Two earrings drop into my palm.

I recognize them immediately. They’re the earrings that were sitting on the ledge of the hot tub at the Tunstall house.

“Rob,” I breathe.

“I stole them,” he says. “And I was going to sell them.”

I swallow. All the heat has left my body, leaving a brick of icy tension to settle in my abdomen.

Rob’s a thief. He’s admitting it. He’s proving it. I’ve been defending him to my friends, to my father, when everything everyone warned me about is true.

The earrings are practically weightless, but they burn against my palm. I don’t know if I should take them with me or leave them. I don’t want to be a part of any of this. Much like Samantha’s secrets, I don’t want Rob’s, too.

I stare at him. “You were going to sell them?”

“Yes.” His eyes are searing mine, like he expects me to make sense of it, but I can’t.

“You stole them when we were together? Were you using me to get in that room?” All the breath rushes out of my lungs as I reevaluate the whole night at the party. “Did you use me to—”

“No!” He almost shouts the word, and I flinch. “No, Maegan. It was—I don’t know what it is. It was after. After Bill. After I had to listen to him accuse me.”

He was so upset when we left the house. I could almost understand retaliation as a motivation, but … “You said you’ve stolen other things.”

“Only what wouldn’t be missed! And—”

“That’s still stealing!”

“I know. I know.” Rob’s eyes are panicked. Anguished. “I wasn’t thinking. I was so angry. It was—it was a mistake. You understand that. I know you understand that.”

“My mistake didn’t hurt anyone else,” I say.

His expression hardens, a glimpse of the old Rob Lachlan peeking through. “Yeah? I heard that it hurt about a hundred people.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Are you kidding me? None of this is fair.”

He’s angry now. Good. So am I. “Just because people treat you like crap doesn’t mean you get to take whatever you want from them.”

“Just because people treat you like crap doesn’t mean you have to sit there and take it.”

That’s not a dig, but right now, it feels like one. “It doesn’t mean I get to forget the difference between right and wrong.”

“So you only get to do that when you’re jealous of your sister?”

That hits me like a sucker punch. I reach out and grab his wrist, but I’m less gentle than he was with mine. His eyes are dark pools of anger and guilt and shame and sadness, but I can’t figure it all out, and right this second, I don’t want to. I drop the earrings into his hand and stand.

He catches my hand. “Wait. Stop. Please. Maegan. I’m sorry.”

“You are a thief,” I say to him.

“I don’t want to be. Do you understand that? I don’t—it was a mistake. I want to undo it.”

I know all about mistakes you can’t undo. “Then turn yourself in,” I say.

Without another word, I walk out.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Rob

Monday morning, I show up at school looking like I spent the weekend on a bender. Despite what Maegan said, I kept waiting for the cops to show up and arrest me. When car tires rolled up the driveway, I thought for sure it was time. My heart nearly beat a path out of my chest. I actually laced up my running shoes.

It was just Mom coming home.

That was almost as bad. I was a wreck. Confessing to her would be a lot different from confessing to Maegan, so I dove into bed and turned my lights off.

She barely looked in on me before moving down the hallway to her own room.

When the police didn’t show up, that was almost worse. Was Maegan waiting until morning to tell her father? Maybe he was working a late shift and she’d have to wait for him to come home.

Maybe she meant what she said.

Turn yourself in.